#mack bolan

[lilithsaintcrow]

"Melville meant himself. You want to be careful what you wish for. Inspiration means breathing. Fish breathe by drowning."

[artbyblastweave]

Some food for thought: I don't know if you're already familiar with this, but there's an episode of Classic-era Doctor Who where the Doctor + companions travel to the Land of Fiction (a pocket dimension full of characters from myth, folklore & narrative fiction), and encounter a superhero drawn from a fictional 2000 AD comic serial, the Karkus. He *seems* like a parody of Liefeld-style antiheroes from the '90s - comically exaggerated muscles, death or corpse-related name, threats of graphic violence, carries a massive gun... except this episode, The Mind Robber, was written in *1968*!

That's actually only 6 years before The Punisher's debut appearance! And a year before one of the major inspirations for the Punisher, Mack Bolan. I've heard through the grapevine that Punisher is sort of a surviving example of a kind of ultraviolent muscleman vigilante pulp character who he's since eclipsed in the public imagination, so it wouldn't surprise me if the Karkus is a now-illegible riff on characters who were common at the time but didn't manage to survive into the modern media landscape.

[pressplay-if]

I LOVE T.REX!!! you dont know how much joy i got from listening to Get It On right after i saw the poll. what other bands/artists are you thinking of incorporating into your work? i love stevie nicks and fleetwood mack but i would love to see some david bowie references if thats also something you listen to.

i really love the IF so far and wish you the best of luck!!! <3

YAY OMG I'M STOKED TO HEAR THAT. Bolan was such a character (affectionate), and Get It On is Paul/Paulette Zima's intro song in my head lol

I FREAKING LOVE DAVID BOWIE I LOVE HIM SO MUCH SOOOO MUCH

I loved him even before I got into Fleetwood Mac and Stevie Nicks. Which is not to say that I love him more, but I've loved him for longer. So yes, there will indeed be Bowie references (plural). Here's the other artists I am currently planning on/considering referencing in the intros: Tim Capello, Patti Smith, Blondie, Carole King, Carly Simon, Rod Stewart, Bon Jovi, Florence and the Machine. Of course, it's very specific songs by these people that I have in mind, but I won't divulge what those songs are bc it could be spoilery. I'm working things out as I go, though, but in essence, every chapter is going to have a lyrical intro to fit the story.

Small teaser: Chapter 3, which deals with the hospitalization of MC, will have a reference to "Free" by Florence and the Machine as an intro :)

[bracketsoffear]

Warriors (Erin Hunter) "This one didn't get past round 2 in the Hunt and honestly I think it deserves a Slaughter win more. It takes place in a kitty civilization where the characters are very frequently battling over very important subjects such as who gets to own a pile of rocks or some cat catching a rabbit on the wrong side of the border. There's brief periods of peace and allyship, but most of the time, tensions are present and everybody is probably willing to start beating each other up if they scent another clan on their territory. The violence isn't instinct or the thrill of it beyond the fact that these are still cats who hunt prey, but it's still rather irrational in many cases. The only real path in life you can have in a clan which isn't committing to causing and withstanding senseless violence is the path of healing that senseless violence, seeing cats you can't save die and also not being able to have children or a mate ever, which isn't even something you can choose to do without approval from cat heaven most times, meaning that you'll most likely be locked into a cycle of mindless battles over that one guy from the other clan accidentally marking the wrong side of the border.

This is also how you get brand new artists in the age range the books are for drawing cat violence and death with their limited skills before they somehow become the best artists you've ever seen while still probably drawing lots of cat violence and death. These murder cat books have an unexplained impact on young artists who will be drawing the same scenes of their pick for the saddest cat death years later. It also gets people making their own stories inspired by it, which are often still cat soap operas with plenty of senseless violence (source: 9 year old me had one of these bloody cat soap opera stories inspired by Warriors), and might even lead to Warriors rps with similar amounts of violence."

The Executioner (Don Pendleton) ""I am not their judge. These people have judged themselves by their own actions. I am their judgment. I am their executioner."

Mack Bolan (nicknamed "The Executioner" by his fellow soldiers) is an elite sniper/penetration specialist in The Vietnam War when he receives word that his father Sam, a steelworker in Pittsfield, has gone insane and shot dead his wife Elsa and daughter Cynthia ("Cindy"). On talking to the Sole Survivor, younger brother Johnny, Bolan discovers that his father was being squeezed by Mafia Loan Sharks and, on hearing that his daughter was prostituting herself to cover his debt, snapped under the pressure.

Figuring there's no point in fighting a war 8,000 miles away when there's a bigger enemy right here at home, Mack Bolan sets forth on a one-man crusade to destroy The Mafia, using all the military weapons and tactics at his disposal including heavy machine guns, rocket launchers, sniper rifles, night-vision scopes, radio-detonated explosives, electronic surveillance, silenced handguns and the garrotte. Bolan is also fond of using wiles to turn his enemies against each other.

Inspired the character of The Punisher. Being in the Mafia (no matter how distant the link) is punishable by death. Doesn't matter if you just are an errand boy, you are guilty and must die."

[trashmenace]

The Executioner 10: Caribbean Kill by Don Pendleton

The Executioner 10 Caribbean Kill by Don Pendleton

Mack Bolan flies straight from Las Vegas to Puerto Rico, smashes his plane into a mafia compound and hits the ground running. After some jungle combat he rescues a sex worker who ends up being a federal agent, rescues a hostage, and raids a mansion to take out the local head. Along the way he recruits a mafia pilot 'Nam veteran.

Bolan learns of a Federal Government effort to have him snuffed out. The perceived enemy also expands, to include governments and corporation who profit from organized crime.

Available at Amazon

[chernobog13]

Actor Steve Holland, TV's Flash Gordon in 1954, posing as Doc Savage for the covers painted by James Bama for the 1960s paperback reprints of Doc's adventures. Bama dubbed Holland "the world's greatest male model."

Holland was also the model for The Avenger, when his books were reprinted in the 1970s, and Mack Bolan, The Executioner. His likeness appeared on hundreds of other paperback covers, from spy thrillers to cowboy yarns.

[bookishpixiereads]

“The Executioner: War Against the Mafia” by Don Pendleton

⭐️ ⭐️ 

The whole experience of this book is wild.The book was originally published in 1969, but my used copy was published in 1972. It’s the first in a 642 book series.

There is a literal cigarette ad in the middle of this book! Flip through the photos on my post if you want to see it! It wasn’t even the brand of cigarettes that our main character smoked!

Mack Bolan is the Executioner. Bolan is an expert marksman during the Vietnam War to the point that his nickname becomes The Executioner. The first chapter, which honestly was the best part of the book, tells the story of how Mack’s father got behind in loan payments to the mafia who then proceeded to shake him down. A lot of very bad things happen that I don’t want to spoil because as I said its the best chapter in the whole darn thing, but its bad, and Mack is granted leave to come home and deal with the fallout. Then he seeks revenge on members of the Mafia - execution-style.  

I’ve never read something that was so obviously written for a male audience.  This is absolutely written for the male gaze. If you can’t tell by the title and the dime novel nature of this cover, this is not high class literature. And that’s fine.  Most of what I read is not high class literature. But this was just violence and sex.  

And the women in this book were only viewed as virgins or whores. There is no in between. And there is a lot of hypocrisy in the way he treats sex workers. And if have to read one more time about women’s “globular” breasts, I swear…

So much of this book is very surface level. You don’t get a lot of what Mack’s thinking, just a lot of him doing. Most of his internal dialogue is him debating the morality of what he is doing.

Sometimes it’s funny reading a book written in the 60s, because the author is trying to show off technology that was new for the time, but was NEVER pertinent to the plot. We are given a description over the span of a couple of pages about how the mafia has computerized their prostitution business and in detail, how it works. Does it come back later for this to be important? No, it doesn’t.

Not the worst book, but wild. 

[ninasbookshelf]

I'm tempted to vote in your genre poll, but I'm not certain which one is most accurate or what genre definitions are.

Is adventure kind of exclusively like Mack Bolan Executioner/Remo Williams Destroyer-type novels and then maybe Doc Savage pulps?

I was tempted to vote adventure because I do dabble in that area and also read sword and sorcery fantasy, superhero comics, plain text novelizations of superhero comics, RPG setting-inspired fantasy novels, and paranormal romance where the heroine does spend a lot of time mowing down rogue vampires and shapeshifters with guns and flamethrowers, which in my opinion could all come together in one big genre that could be called adventure.

I’m late to respond to this - I haven’t read any of the specific novels you mentioned, but from the brief descriptions i read online just now, it seems they are classified as adventure, but I don’t think the genre is limited to that specific type of novel. Totally up to you whichever you feel fits your tastes most. If it’s a mix of fantasy and non-fantasy adventure stories that you read, I’d choose the adventure option! It sounds like it’s a good fit based on the traits you described

(I hope this made sense lol)

[esonetwork]

'Levon's Trade' Book Review

New Post has been published on http://esonetwork.com/levons-trade-book-review/

'Levon's Trade' Book Review

LEVON’S TRADE By Chuck Dixon Rough Edges Press 192 pgs

A little over a year ago, Chuck Dixon sent us a copy of his novel “Levon’s Time,” the seventh in this series about Levon Cade, an ex-Marine who crosses paths with lots of bad people; much to their woes. We’d been aware of the series but hadn’t had the opportunity to check it out. The best way to describe Levon Cade is that he is pretty much a redneck cousin to both Jack Reacher and Mack Bolan. He’s a good man, a patriot, and a devoted father. Delighted with that book, we picked up volumes eight and nine as they were published. Becoming enthusiastic fans, we put on the breaks. Before going any further with this character, it was high time we went back and started at the beginning. Thus we attempted to purchase Volume One from Amazon only to discover it wasn’t available.

We dropped Dixon an e-mail to that fact and he was surprised. Come to find out, Amazon had screwed up, and book one should have been listed as available. He wasted no time in correcting that snafu. We in turn immediately ordered Volumes One and Two. And here we are with this review. Readers should understand, that regardless of my friendship with the author, my reviews are based solely on the book’s quality. If a book stinks to high heaven, we don’t review it. The world has enough junk in it without us adding more.

“Levon’s Trade” is a power-packed action thriller that hits the ground running. We’re introduced to Cade, a widower whose wife died of cancer and left him with a 7-year-old daughter named Merry (short for Meredith). She lives with her maternal grandparents who are suing the courts for full custody. They argue that Cade suffers from PTSD and is a danger to the child. Of course, the claim is bogus, but the grandparents are wealthy and will use that wealth to forestall the court’s verdict until Cade can no longer afford to contest them. In short, he’s in desperate need of quick cash.

This is where the plot intertwines with Job Bob Wiley, a rich construction entrepreneur whose daughter, Jenna, has vanished without a trace while on Spring Break in Florida. Tampa police come up empty in their investigation and an anxious Joe Bob believes his daughter has been kidnapped. Suspecting Cade’s mysterious military background might have included special ops, Wiley offers him five thousand dollars to go and find his girl.

From that point on, Levon Cade becomes a ruthless manhunter trained by the most efficient military force in the world, the U.S. Marines. In no time at all, he picks up the trail leading to several criminal networks made up of foreign immigrants who consider American law enforcement agencies amateurs. Not so Cade. He’s a one-man army they can’t stop. “Levon’s Trade” is lean in its prose, with Dixon never wasting a single word to tell his story. One scene races into the next until the gun-blasting climax explodes across the final pages. It’s a fantastic debut of a truly great action hero.

Do yourselves a favor, dear readers, don’t make our mistake and wait to discover him. You’ll only regret it in the end.  Now onto book two.

[vbartilucci]

Solid look at Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, a show that deserves more eyeballs on it.

I think it's a shame that Matthew Holness hasn't achieved the kind of fame that Richard Ayoade and Matt Berry (heck, even Stephen Merchant) have.

The sequel series, Man to Man with Dean Lerner is another perfect example of crafting a whole world that only gets referenced in the chat show's interviews.

Seek out The Reprizalizer, matt's later work which skewers the Men's Adventure genre (Mack Bolan) and still tells a tragic tale about its author.

[chrisabraham]

I was such a 15-year-old, hulking hairy dark haired helmet-headed, tiger-stripped, fanboi!

I met Don Pendleton in 1985 at a Mack Bolan Convention in San Francisco

[riflebrass]

A buddy sent me a video on Discord. Some guy was talking about illiteracy. A girl told him he didn't know what he was talking about because he's only 15. He told her to name 10 books. All she could come up with were Twilight and Game of Thrones. He kept interrupting her telling her to list specific books rather than series.

I got to thinking about the few books I've read over the years. For an extra challenge I tried to list books that were never adapted into or based off movies, TV shows, or video games and they had to be books I read completely.

I could only come up with 5 books. There were probably half a dozen of my grandpa's Mack Bolan books and other similar syndications I read back in my teens but I couldn't remember the actual title of any of them.

[jacobnewt]

REVIEW Boston Blitz (The Executioner Book 12) (Kindle) By Don Pendleton

When the Pittsfield Mafia destroyed Mack Bolan’s family, the only survivor was his brother Johnny—a wide-eyed teen not prepared for life on the front lines of a war against the mob.

Before he began his assault on organized crime, Mack sent Johnny into hiding along with Mack’s fiancée, Val. Now they’ve been kidnapped by an enterprising thug who thinks he can use the Executioner’s family against him. The Boston mob will pay for his mistake.

Read and download this book from teachab.com

[bracketsoffear]

For Whom the Bell Tolls (Ernest Hemingway) "In 1937 Ernest Hemingway traveled to Spain to cover the civil war there for the North American Newspaper Alliance. Three years later he completed the greatest novel to emerge from "the good fight," For Whom the Bell Tolls. The story of Robert Jordan, a young American in the International Brigades attached to an antifascist guerilla unit in the mountains of Spain, it tells of loyalty and courage, love and defeat, and the tragic death of an ideal. In his portrayal of Jordan's love for the beautiful Maria and his superb account of El Sordo's last stand, in his brilliant travesty of La Pasionaria and his unwillingness to believe in blind faith, Hemingway surpasses his achievement in The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms to create a work at once rare and beautiful, strong and brutal, compassionate, moving and wise. "If the function of a writer is to reveal reality," Maxwell Perkins wrote to Hemingway after reading the manuscript, "no one ever so completely performed it." Greater in power, broader in scope, and more intensely emotional than any of the author's previous works, it stands as one of the best war novels of all time."

The Executioner (Don Pendleton) ""I am not their judge. These people have judged themselves by their own actions. I am their judgment. I am their executioner."

Mack Bolan (nicknamed "The Executioner" by his fellow soldiers) is an elite sniper/penetration specialist in The Vietnam War when he receives word that his father Sam, a steelworker in Pittsfield, has gone insane and shot dead his wife Elsa and daughter Cynthia ("Cindy"). On talking to the Sole Survivor, younger brother Johnny, Bolan discovers that his father was being squeezed by Mafia Loan Sharks and, on hearing that his daughter was prostituting herself to cover his debt, snapped under the pressure.

Figuring there's no point in fighting a war 8,000 miles away when there's a bigger enemy right here at home, Mack Bolan sets forth on a one-man crusade to destroy The Mafia, using all the military weapons and tactics at his disposal including heavy machine guns, rocket launchers, sniper rifles, night-vision scopes, radio-detonated explosives, electronic surveillance, silenced handguns and the garrotte. Bolan is also fond of using wiles to turn his enemies against each other.

Inspired the character of The Punisher. Being in the Mafia (no matter how distant the link) is punishable by death. Doesn't matter if you just are an errand boy, you are guilty and must die."

[theactioneer]

Michael Herring Blood and Fire book cover (1997)